Embedded Files
Sadie by Courtney Summers
The book alternates between Sadie's first-person perspective as she crisscrosses Colorado in search of Keith, who sexually abused her when he dated her mother and who she believes murdered Mattie, and the transcript of a serialized podcast called The Girls. The podcast, set in the future after Sadie's car has been found abandoned with her belongings inside, details a New York City radio host's search for her. His interviews with her family and those who crossed her path provide an outsider's perspective to Sadie's actions and interior monologue, expanding on themes of revenge, ineffective policing, poverty, and addiction and its impact on parenting. Both story lines propel the plot and provide context.
Review from Kirkus Reviews:
Sadie is seeking her sister's killer; months later, podcast producer West McCray seeks to learn why Sadie abandoned her car and vanished. When Mattie was born to Claire, a white, drug-addicted, single mother, Sadie, 6, became her de facto parent. Her baby sister's love filled a hole in Sadie's fiercely protective heart. Claire favored Mattie, who remained attached to her long after Claire disappeared from their grim, trailer-park home in rural Colorado. Sadie believes that Mattie's determination to find Claire-which Sadie opposed-led to her brutal murder at age 13. Now 19, Sadie sets out to find and kill the man she holds responsible for her sister's murder. Interwoven with Sadie's first-person account is the transcript of McCray's podcast series, The Girls, tracking his efforts to learn what's happened to Sadie, prompted and partly guided by the sisters' sympathetic neighbor. West's off-the-record conversations are also included. Sadie is smart, observant, tough, and at times heartbreakingly vulnerable, her interactions mediated by a profound stutter. In the podcast, characters first seen through Sadie's ruthless eyes further reveal (or conceal) their interactions and motives. Like Salla Simukka's Lumikki Andersson, Sadie's a powerful avatar: the justice-seeking loner incarnated as a teenage girl. Sadie exempts no one-including herself-from her unsparing judgment. Conveyed indirectly through its effect on victims, child sexual abuse permeates the novel as does poverty's intergenerational legacy. A riveting tour de force.
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